How Nosgoth, The Legacy Of Kain Spin-Off, Died

The Legacy of Kain series always did unusual things - but going online only and free-to-play was perhaps the strangest decision yet.

What would ultimately become the last Legacy of Kain title, Nosgoth was a game that was ultimately cancelled before leaving beta. The game's problematic history is chronicled in part with the video below from YouTuber nerdSlayer, which looks at how Psyonix - but not the same team that developed Rocket League - tried to salvage Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun for the free-to-play arena shooter.

I remember the original Legacy of Kain incredibly fondly. A friend had the PC version of Blood Omen and later lent me the demo, which was fascinating since I'd grown up with a completely genres of games until then (RTS, some shooters, flight simulators and, of course, Mortal Kombat).

And that's one of the sadder elements about Nosgoth's failure: what it means for the Legacy of Kain franchise. Square Enix announced around the time of Nosgoth's cancellation that they would still consider pitches utilising the series, but after two cancelled projects - it's not surprised that enthusiasm wore thin.

Square's director of indie publishing, Phil Elliott, tweeted last year that Square was considering opening the Legacy of Kain IP to third-parties. Nothing has come of that since, although there is some comfort in knowing that the option is available.

Is it because they tried to take a single player game with loved characters and story, notable for its voice acting and writing (for the time anyway) and tried to push it out as a multi player only, class based shooter? Meanwhile cancelling the story based actual follow up?

Fact is, it doesn’t matter how many millions you sink into a game, or how beloved the IP you skin it with, if it’s only a match-based online PVP game, it’s got about a 75% chance of being dead inside a year. There are a small handful of outliers who are coincidentally the reason that their competition keeps shutting down servers.

I would have hoped that aspiring devs would stop wasting their time on these years ago after Steam libraries started turning into fucking memorial walls of failures, but they just keep on cloning failure. I assume it’s because actual content is much harder than finishing your art and systems then just chucking players at each other and pretending that’s content.

Triple AAA games nailing the brief. Indie games surprising people out of nowhere, and expansions and patches that completely turn a game around. It's been a good year for games - now it's time for you to vote for your favourite.